Woman Caught on Video Attacking Teen Who Flew His Drone Over a Beach

A Connecticut woman has been charged with assault and breach of peace after attacking a teenager who was flying his quadcopter drone over a beach.

Andrea Mears, 23, called the police on 17-year-old Austin Haughwout because she believed he was using the drone to film women at Hammonasset Beach. While on the phone with the dispatcher, she kept a hand on the remote for his drone, trying to take it away from him.

As soon as she ended the call, she pushed the teen over from behind and started hitting him, calling him a pervert. "You wanna take pictures? Yeah, you're gonna see how it feels when the police come," she said.

The police came, but things didn't go the way Mears expected. When she told them Haughwout had assaulted her, he showed officers the video above—taken on his iPhone, not with the drone—and they arrested Mears for assault.

"Though [Haughwout] may have hit Mears at some point in the incident, it appeared to be while he was defending himself and attempting to get away from the attack," the arresting officer wrote in his report, according to Fox CT.

Haughwout told Fox CT he was glad he took the video. "If I didn't I think I would have been arrested," he said.

The teen wasn't charged with any crime, as there's no law against filming in a public place. And besides, he explained, the drone was at such a high altitude that any individual on the beach would have been impossible to make out in his footage.